• the217
• Movies + TV
• Don't look into these Mirrors

Related Media

Mirrors

Buzz says:   MPAA Rating: R
Current Showtimes: No showtimes available

The only person to come out of Mirrors with a shred of dignity is Amy Smart. And she gets her jaw ripped off. The scene is by far the coolest thing about the movie, and it is most certainly why Ms. Smart signed onto the project, as her character basically has nothing to do except graphically rip her own face off (complete with dangling tongue! Gross!). The blood flows in tenfold and the way the camera never cuts away is shocking. I wish I could say that the rest of Mirrors is as wonderfully gruesome as this scene, but sadly, it is not.

Mirrors is yet another lame remake of a Japanese original, being only slightly better than recent efforts like One Missed Call and Shutter. The cast, including Kiefer Sutherland and Paula Patton, does their best with stale dialogue and a plot that could be renamed The Ring 3: this Time with Mirrors! In The Ring, a violent opening scene precedes Naomi Watts discovering a ghostly mystery and having to get to the bottom of it in order to save her family, ultimately leading her to a very disturbed little girl. In Mirrors, a violent opening scene precedes Kiefer Sutherland discovering a ghostly mystery and having to get to the bottom of it in order to save his family, ultimately leading him to a very disturbed little girl. Sound similar?

The director of Mirrors is Alexandre Aja, the man (along with co-writer Gregory Levasseur) responsible for High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes. Both of those films were brutal, terrifying, and very successful. The Hills Have Eyes is actually one of the most effective horror films of the past ten years, as it scared the living hell out of me when I saw it. Thus, I was extremely optimistic when I heard about Mirrors.

I don’t understand how everything went so wrong. Aja has such a visionary eye behind the camera, and his past work is very impressive. The cast is also higher rate than most horror casts, and Kiefer Sutherland even serves as a producer of the movie. Aja and Sutherland could not have envisioned the film turning out to be so boring. Maybe the idea looked better on paper…

Mirrors is the what would occur if elements of The Sixth Sense, The Frighteners, Dark Water, The Grudge, The Ring, One Missed Call, Suspiria, and 24 all combined into one film. Simply put, there is no originality. It is puzzling how Hollywood keeps turning out horror films that present nothing new and act on ideas that have already been established. Sure, The Ring scared audiences when it came out, but replicating the same formula is the antithesis of success in horror. It is tiring and frustrating for audiences to witness Hollywood studios demeaning their intelligence and expecting monotonous, tired plots to still scare.

The horror genre is in a sad place as of now. For every Hostel there are four lame torture porn flicks made. For every Signs there are a slew of intelligence-free alien movies presented to audiences. But the subgenre committing the most blatant disrespect to horror fans is that of the Japanese remake. Mirrors was a glimmer of hope, as it has talented filmmakers and a competent cast, yet it proved just as disappointing as every other film like it.

Amy Smart’s scene is the only reason the movie gets 1.5 stars instead of 1 star. At least 1 minute of the movie was awesome.